CHAPTER 17
(APRIL 1945)
U.S. MARINE ASSAULT FORCE
OPERATION ICEBERG
1 APRIL 1945
1030 HOURS LOCAL
The morning of 1 April 1945 was Easter Sunday. It was also April Fools’ Day.
Events on the two fronts were irrevocably bringing the world war to an end. In Europe, U.S. troops had encircled remaining German troops in the Ruhr Valley and the Soviet army had surrounded the capital city. In a Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler and his henchmen were preparing for an ignominious end to their evil campaign for conquest of the West. 1 April was also D-Day for the Allied offensive into northern Italy, as the Axis began to crumble.
But for the more than 200,000 American soldiers, sailors, and Marines heading to Okinawa, it was “L-Day”—Landing Day—for a campaign the war planners called Operation Iceberg. Okinawa is the main island in the Ryukyu Islands group, halfway between Formosa and Kyushu. Tokyo was committed to the defense of Okinawa as long as they could. They sealed that determination with plans for maximum use of kamikaze attacks.
As the Allied troops aboard the invasion ships pressed closer to Okinawa, their officers stressed the importance of taking this final island, that it would help end the war. But they were also brutally honest. In light of the casualties inflicted at Iwo Jima, there was no reason to expect anything less at Okinawa. The question plaguing the Americans was how to fight an enemy so dangerous and so desperate that he was willing to kill himself in order to destroy you. The answer seemed obvious: The only option was to fight to the death—just as the enemy planned to do.
On the island of Okinawa, that’s exactly what the U.S. soldiers and Marines did, in a gut-wrenching final showdown with the Japanese forces that spring of 1945. This would become Japan’s brutal “last stand” against the American forces.
The Americans had fought World War II on two fronts on opposite sides of the globe. Both Germany and Japan had refused to give in, and the casualties of bloody battles in both theaters mounted. The number of American military dead or wounded had risen to more than a million. Yet the American fighting men still pushed on. Because the U.S. Armed Forces were waging a two-front war, they desperately needed matériel and reinforcements in order to keep going.
Yet although things were tough for the Americans, they were worse for the Japanese. The Imperial Army was getting even more desperate than they had been at Iwo Jima. They knew that if they failed to push the Americans back into the sea at Okinawa, the next place they would be fighting them would be on the beaches of Japan.
All across the Pacific, Emperor Hirohito’s time was running out. Fighting the Americans and their allies over the past three years had taken a huge toll on the Imperial Army, Navy, and air forces. They were out of nearly everything—fuel, ships, aircraft, munitions—and each day they were running lower and lower on their most essential war component: the Japanese fighting man.
The American public got behind their men in uniform, now numbering sixteen million troops fighting Hitler and Tojo (including a smaller number of noncombatant women in the WACs, WAVEs, and WAFs). The tide of war in Europe had turned in the spring of 1945, when the Allies had Hitler on the defensive, but the war wasn’t over in that theater just yet. The Joint Chiefs had planned for an all-out offensive against Nazi aggression to end the war in Europe in weeks rather than months.
If Germany could be forced to surrender, taking Okinawa could force an unconditional surrender from the Japanese as well. Okinawa’s proximity to Japan’s main islands was strategically critical to the Allied invasion plan, so the Joint Chiefs were willing to risk huge casualties in order to capture it.
A year earlier, the Joint Chiefs had considered Iwo Jima and Okinawa as targets for a final takeover—especially Okinawa. Not just because the tiny island was within striking distance of the Home Islands of Japan by American B-24s and B-25s, but also because of the psychological value of capturing a piece of real estate that for 5,000 years had never known any other ruler but Japan. With the acquisition of these two islands, the military planners in Washington felt they could move the war in the Pacific to a quicker end.
Capturing Okinawa would set the stage for the invasion of Japan. Owning Iwo Jima would help too, but it was more than 750 miles from the Japanese mainland. Okinawa was closer and would give the Americans a decided edge. Control of these islands cut Japan off from her crucial refueling supplies and repair stations and made them available to American ships instead.
America’s strategy of “island-hopping” had created stepping-stones for its forces to jump from island to island, each step bringing them closer to Japan. Okinawa was the final hop. At Okinawa, the Marines, Army, Navy, and U.S. Army and Navy air forces all united in a final battle that prepared them for the invasion of mainland Japan.
Americans saw Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi in their newspapers and in movie newsreels. They were cheered by the fact that the Marines had taken Iwo Jima and secured its airfields, giving the United States yet another strategic air base close to the mainland of Japan.
Okinawa was much larger—more than sixty miles long—and hilly, honeycombed with caves, tunnels, and tombs. It was arguably going to be even more costly to take than Iwo Jima.
General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., the son of a Confederate general, was selected to lead the invasion. He led the massive 10th Amphibious Force. Admiral Ray Spruance and Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher headed up Task Force 58 and Admiral Kelly Turner led Task Force 51 naval forces. The British Royal Navy’s Vice Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings was assigned to the 5th Fleet and led Task Force 57—a British fleet of four carriers, two battleships, five cruisers, and fifteen destroyers. Marine Major General Roy Geiger would lead the invasion force with three Marine divisions and four Army divisions.
General Buckner’s nemesis, Lt. General Mitsuru Ushijima, a senior member of the Imperial Headquarters, led the 32nd Imperial Army—probably one of the most effective combat teams ever assembled, consisting of more than 100,000 troops.
During March 1945, the U.S. Navy began air and sea attacks against Okinawa with such ferocity that the Japanese called it a “typhoon of steel.” Six days before the planned invasion, the Navy increased its shelling intensity, pounding the island with more munitions than the 20,000 shells that they’d dumped on Iwo Jima. This time they also pumped tens of thousands of rounds onto the sites where naval recon photos showed evidence of Japanese emplacements. But the weeklong bombardment did little damage to the dug-in Japanese.
Also during March, Rear Admiral Alexander Sharp’s fleet of 122 mine patrol craft began minesweeping operations. Continuing night and day until the invasion began, Sharp’s operation swept 2,500 square miles of ocean. They found and destroyed six enemy minefields and nearly 200 mines. But Sharp’s fleet paid a price for their efforts: His ships and men accounted for 15 percent of all U.S. naval casualties during the Okinawa operation.
Nineteen-year-old Seaman Third Class Larry Delewski joined the Navy to do his part. When he was assigned a stateside, landlocked, noncombatant job, he requested sea duty. His request was granted, and Larry saw perhaps more action than he’d bargained for. He was first aboard the destroyer USS Laffey when it was sent to Normandy for the D-Day invasion of France. The Laffey was one of just sixteen (out of 300 destroyers built during the war) to receive a Presidential Unit Citation.
When Delewski’s destroyer returned from Europe, it was refitted in the Boston Navy Yard and then given orders to head for the Pacific and Okinawa. The Navy was about to lose more ships and men in Okinawa than it had lost at Pearl Harbor.
SEAMAN THIRD CLASS
LAWRENCE DELEWSKI, USN
Aboard USS Laffey
1 April 1945
1115 Hours Local
I’d been trained in the gunnery school and I never got notification that I’d made third class until we were going through the Panama Canal heading to the Pacific.
On the way over, we practiced with the big guns. The gun would fire, then it recoiled fifteen, eighteen inches with hydraulic brakes to stop it. After the gun fired, the hot shell, about thirty inches long, came out. The “hot shell man” wore asbestos gloves up to his shoulders, and it was his job to clear that shell. Once it cleared, he’d trip the ramming shoe down so the gun could be reloaded. And then the “powder man” would load the powder in. This is a five-inch gun, so the powder for the shell itself was like a great big loaf of bread but it weighed over sixty pounds. Then you put the powder and shell in, hit the ramming shoe, and then hit the lever.
The ramming shoe came forward. The bridge closed and you’re ready to fire again. Now everything I’ve just described took place every three seconds, so it took a lot of teamwork.
We had six five-inch guns and twelve 40 mm guns. We also had ten torpedoes and some depth charges. So we were armed and built to protect all those other ships as well.
I always had a globe and I’d hold it up and I’d say, just look—all you see is water. The Pacific Ocean is big. You can go for days and days and not see anything but water.
It was common knowledge that we were moving progressively north toward Okinawa. And sooner or later, we’d go for the Japanese homeland.
Destroyers like the Laffey seemed to always be in short supply so we were switched back and forth from fleet to fleet. Sometimes we’d be operating with the 3rd Fleet, other times with the aircraft carriers, and sometimes with the bombardment groups. And another time, we might be with the ships actually taking part in a landing.
This landing was on Easter Sunday, 1 April, and was fairly uneventful. The Laffey was landing reinforcements day and night.
We saw the damage that a single kamikaze could do. We saw people who were burned and mutilated.
On 12 April the Laffey took a tremendous beating, and there were four other destroyers knocked out the same day. At the worst of it, we had as many as eighty enemy planes on our radar screens at one time.
They started coming in big numbers and we started taking some hits. This plane hit on the blind side and blew me up onto the deck, maybe fifteen, eighteen feet, but I had no broken bones.
Another plane hit just forward of my gun mount. I saw this thing crash and saw the wing as it hit the back of the gun mount, causing a terrible gasoline fire just inside my gun area. Once we got the fire under control, I reported to the bridge that we were ready to resume firing.
I had shrapnel in my back and in the back of my head, with burns on my back. And the fiery explosion burned the hair off the back of my head.
The communications officer, who’s standing there, found an unexploded shell. It was fairly common for these suicide planes to just fly over, rigged with shells, and drop them as bombs. And some hit the Laffey and went right through the main deck, through the lower deck. The rivets flew and the sheet steel opened up.
And so everything from the engine room aft was flooded because we had holes in the bottom. Later that day, two seagoing tugs came alongside. At that point, we must’ve had somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four inches of water below decks.
We were taken to a beach area where we dropped anchor, and then the next morning some underwater welders put patches on the outside so we could pump out the inside.
We lost six men out of that gun crew of thirteen that day. One was a young man who went to gunnery school with me in Newport, up by the bridge. They took a direct hit up there and he was killed. There was another gunner, Joe Mealy from Brooklyn, and shrapnel went right through him. He was dead in seconds.
We just knew that sooner or later, people on our ship were going to be lost. There was no escape. That’s the thing when you’re in the Navy: There’s no place to hide.
U.S. MARINE ASSAULT FORCE
OKINAWA
1 APRIL 1945
1915 HOURS LOCAL
By 1 April, more than 1,300 Allied ships had carried hundreds of thousands of men across the Pacific to assemble off Okinawa—more than at Normandy in June 1944.
General Ushijima had spent many months turning Okinawa into a fortress. His troops dug elaborate networks of tunnels that connected to and protected his strategically located artillery. He hoped to delay the Americans’ ultimate invasion operation—the assault on the mainland of Japan—for as long as possible.
Ushijima stored enough water, rations, and essential supplies and munitions to last months. His plan was to let the Americans come ashore and then move inland. As at Iwo Jima, the Japanese would not oppose the American landing at first. But once they were far enough inland, he’d have them boxed in with his triangulated artillery and machine guns. Then Ushijima planned to hit them with all the strength of the 32nd Imperial Army in an unparalleled trap.
Still, it was easy at first—the Americans moved quickly into the hills above the beaches. The landing on Okinawa was so different from Iwo Jima that Admiral Turner actually believed that the Japanese had already given up. The Americans secured the beachhead and two airfields by that first morning with minimal casualties.
The Marines had also feigned a landing on Minatoga, completely hoodwinking General Ushijima, who mistakenly radioed Imperial Headquarters that his troops had successfully repulsed the Americans, who had “suffered numerous casualties.”
But then the U.S. Army’s 96th Infantry Division was confronted by soldiers of Ushijima’s army—most of them hidden in the hills of the south end of the island. It was the first major combat on Okinawa, with the American soldiers attempting to take the high ground one hill at a time, especially up on Kakazu Ridge. In the first four days, American troops suffered 3,000 casualties. But in the coming days, their casualties would top 3,000 each day.
The American armed forces desperately needed reinforcements, and during 1944 young Americans had lined up at the recruiting stations to serve. One of them was seventeen-year-old Dan Barton, who went to boot camp and was sent directly to the Pacific.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS DAN BARTON, USMC
Vicinity Higashi, Okinawa
1 April 1945
1135 Hours Local
From my personal experience—although Guam was bad enough—compared to Okinawa it was child’s play. At the southern end of Okinawa, the Japanese made us pay for every inch of ground we took.
We landed on Okinawa with seven officers and 235 enlisted men. Eighty-one days later, there was one man in that group of 235 that stood muster. All the rest had either been killed or wounded.
Because of the heavy casualties at Peleliu and Iwo, we were expecting heavy casualties in the first waves. But when we walked ashore there was nothing.
Our regimental objective was Yontan Airfield. They gave us three days to take it but by nine-thirty that morning I was standing in the middle of the airfield. Ushijima had decided that instead of trying to meet us at the beach where we had overwhelming firepower, he’d meet us on the southern end of Okinawa, where he had the edge with 110,000 Japanese soldiers dug in. There’s an old military axiom: Always take and hold the high ground. Well, Ushijima had done that.
We were under the impression that after we took the northern end we’d be through and could go home. But then when we started south and looked into the eyes of the fellows coming back, we started to understand. They looked like they’d run into a buzz saw.
The Japanese had registered their artillery and machine guns on our positions. So whenever we tried to seal one cave and take another, we usually drew fire from two or three directions. Plus, they had the high ground so we were right out in the open.
We called Okinawa the emperor’s doorstep. It was the door to Japan. And they knew that even better than we did. So they were going to make it as difficult as they could.
For us, anything moving at night was enemy. You got into your foxhole; you stayed in it. If you heard something outside of it, you threw a hand grenade. You didn’t want to fire a weapon because the muzzle flash gave away your position.
The biggest thing in your mind is, “I cannot let the guy next to me down.” Still, you’re scared to death. Somehow you manage to do what you have to do.
I got wounded on Horseshoe Hill. Mortar and artillery started coming in. My squad leader and my assistant gunner were hit and killed almost instantly.
I was down on the ground, and before I passed out, the sergeant put a compress on my hip. About that time a shell hit behind us, killing him and wounding me again. I got two pieces of shrapnel through the chest and abdomen. Well, the worst part of that is that we were pinned down and couldn’t move. Anybody who stood up was cut down by machine gun fire. So I had to lie there all day and shoot myself with morphine.
The way I felt is that I wasn’t going to die for my country, but I wanted to make the other guy die for his. And I kept that idea before me all the time. I said, “Hey, somehow I’m going to come through this.” And I did.
The thing I remember most were the heavy casualties. You get the feeling that the law of averages is going to catch up. The other thing you never forget is the stench of fighting on Okinawa, because you’re fighting over the same piece of turf day in and day out. You can’t evacuate and pick up the dead. And there’s a smell that you can’t describe but you never get it out of your nostrils. For the rest of your life, you remember it.
10TH ARMY ASSAULT FORCE
VICINITY ISHIKAWA ISTHMUS, OKINAWA
9 APRIL 1945
1615 HOURS LOCAL
On the first day of the landing, the USS Indefatigable was hit by a kamikaze but was saved from serious damage by its armored flight deck. The Japanese launched the first of ten hordes of kamikaze attacks that continued until June. U.S. losses in both men and ships were severe. Between 1,500 and 2,000 kamikaze flights were flown from Kyushu to attack the American ships.
On the sixth day after the landing, the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious was hit by another kamikaze attack but did not sink. General Ushijima’s fleet of kamikaze pilots and planes scored only a few crucial hits, including the U.S. aircraft carriers Wasp and Franklin. When the Wasp was hit, the resulting explosions and fires killed more than a hundred sailors and wounded 269. Nevertheless, within fifteen minutes, the fires aboard the Wasp were extinguished and her remaining crew began bringing back their aircraft.
The carrier Franklin was hit hard, but the cruiser Santa Fe heroically stayed alongside her throughout the afternoon, despite explosions and flames, to rescue those who jumped off the deck to escape from the fiery heat. Damage to the Franklin’s flight deck was extensive, but the ship got under way within hours and was able to return home under her own power. Casualties included 724 killed or missing and 265 wounded. Lieutenant (jg) Donald Gary was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading two sailors below the blazing decks in order to wet down a five-inch gun about to explode. He later found 300 men trapped below decks and led them to safety.
On 6 April, the “super battleship” Yamato, along with the Japanese cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers, set sail for Okinawa. The Yamato, the largest warship ever built, was sent to Okinawa with no protective air cover and only enough fuel for a one-way trip. Their orders were to locate American and Allied ships and destroy them before they were destroyed.
From the very beginning of hostilities around Okinawa, the Japanese were intent on making life miserable for the Allies. In addition to at least 2,000 kamikaze aircraft, the Japanese had also created a fleet of kamikaze ships that included the Yamato, the Yahagi, and the eight destroyers. But these kamikaze ships were met and overwhelmed by aircraft from the 5th Fleet.
The American submarine USS Hackleback tracked the Yamato and her escorts and then alerted carrier-based bombers. Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher launched air strikes on the Yamato. Aircraft from the USS San Jacinto sunk the Japanese destroyer Hamakaze, while the light cruiser Yahagi was hit and went dead in the water. The small Japanese naval force was under incessant attack. The Yahagi was sunk after American carrier-based Hellcats and Avengers made a final attack.
The Yamato also finally succumbed to American air power. It took twelve bombs and seven torpedo hits to finally kill her, but she sank in the East China Sea. Three of the Japanese destroyers were also hit and were so badly damaged that they had to be scuttled. Even the four remaining destroyers could not make the return trip to Japan.
Of the Yamato’s crew of 2,747, all but 269 men were lost. The Yahagi lost about 450; Asashimo lost 330; and the seven destroyers suffered casualties of 391. There were few Japanese survivors. Losses to the Americans were ten planes and a dozen men.
This was the last Japanese naval action of World War II.
Giving support to the Okinawa landing was the most costly naval engagement in U.S. history. Thirty-four American ships and landing craft were sunk and almost 400 others were seriously damaged, many beyond salvaging. Worse, nearly 5,000 sailors were killed in action and an equal number were wounded—most of them burned by flaming gasoline that incinerated the skin of their faces, bodies, and limbs.
By 8 April, the American forces on Okinawa were stopped in their tracks by the line of Japanese defenses in concrete reinforced pillboxes with steel doors unaffected by flame-throwers. Casualties on both sides were growing along with civilian deaths. Additional reinforcements were landed on 9 April, and American troops on the island now numbered 160,000.
Attention now focused on taking Shuri Castle, the key Japanese defensive position of resistance. The “castle” was another reinforced concrete fortification located in the southern part of Okinawa on high land between the eastern and western coasts. As usual, General Ushijima had prepared defensive positions with interlocking fields of fire and could direct his men across the island underground without having to encounter American troops.
The interconnected tunnels were almost impossible to get into. However, against these fortifications was the combined firepower of six U.S. Navy battleships, six cruisers, nine destroyers, and some 650 American aircraft—in addition to the 160,000 Marines and soldiers on the ground.
10TH ARMY ASSAULT FORCE
OKINAWA
21 APRIL 1945
0915 HOURS LOCAL
On 12 April, a major loss had occurred far from the battlefield on Okinawa. Word was communicated from the War Department in Washington that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was dead of a massive stroke after serving twelve years in office. Many of the young men fighting could remember no other president than FDR. Not many of them knew anything at all about their new commander in chief, Harry S. Truman.
Six days later, war correspondent Ernie Pyle headed to the front lines with GIs from the 77th Division. When Pyle joined the fight in the Pacific in early April, he had sought to become acquainted with the Marines. He wrote that their battles in the Pacific had been so brutal, and the Marines’ reputation so fierce, that he was almost afraid of them. But after meeting the Marines in person he wrote that, “they have fears, and qualms and hatred for the war the same as anybody else. They want to go home as badly as any soldier I’ve ever met.”
Pyle tried to understand the minds of the Marines he had chosen to follow. He found them to be young, polite, and compassionate. They bowed to civilians on the roads and did what they could to help them. They were Americans, after all. Pyle finally concluded that, “the Marines do not thirst for battles. I’ve read and heard enough about them to have no doubts whatever about the things they can do when they have to. They are okay for my money, in battle and out.”
Pyle’s dedication to getting his story in the heat of battle led him directly into machine gun crossfire on 18 April on the island of Ie Shima. He was with an American officer when a Japanese machine gun opened up on their vehicle. Both men jumped out of the vehicle and headed for a nearby ditch. But Pyle raised his head too soon, and enemy bullets from the machine gun pierced his head just below the brim of his helmet. He was killed instantly, and was later buried on the island.
The inclement weather reduced visibility and cut down on Allied aircraft assaults and recon. But it also helped to keep the kamikaze away. Yet without the recon to improve their handmade maps, the Americans had badly underestimated that only 50,000 to 65,000 Japanese troops were on the island. In truth, there were almost twice that many hiding in the maze of tunnels and caves.
One American general remarked to his superiors, “It’s going to be really tough.... I see no way to get them out except by blasting them out yard by yard.”
Okinawa’s torrential rains, mudslides, poisonous snakes, mosquitoes, and disease only added to the hell experienced by the American troops. While on Okinawa, the Marines and soldiers also had to endure the constant stench of rotting human flesh.
Nevertheless, in almost three weeks, on 21 April, the soldiers and Marines had put an end to resistance at the northern end of Okinawa. The Japanese defensive line was finally breached on 28 April. General Buckner’s troops attacked the two flanks of the enemy forces and fought ferociously against the Japanese soldiers, whose fortifications were beginning to weaken.
The battle for the rest of the island would continue through the end of June. Before hostilities were over, more than half a million Americans of the 5th Fleet and the 10th Army would be involved.
There would be more casualties right up to the last day of battle on Okinawa. Private First Class Herman “Buff ” Buffington, an Army infantryman, had been lucky before shrapnel hit him on that last day.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS
HERMAN “BUFF” BUFFINGTON, US ARMY
Vicinity Machinato, Okinawa
27 May 1945
1330 Hours Local
For the last two weeks, we had briefings that were puzzling to an eighteen-year-old kid. They were asking if we had drawn up our wills.
I had my nineteenth birthday on 7 May when we were right in the middle of this thing. The original first and second scouts had been wounded, so I was our platoon’s new first scout. And it got rougher and rougher.
There was a convoy coming up the road with five or six trucks coming back from the lines. After the first one passed, we noticed that they were stacked with dead American soldiers, stacked like wood. That was extremely hard to take. It really hit home as to what we were doing there.
The lieutenant said, “Well, would you like to say a prayer with me?” You never hear this ordinarily. But this was the front lines. Then the lieutenant pulled off his helmet and kneeled down and said the Lord’s Prayer.
My buddy pulled a letter out and gave it to the lieutenant and said, “Be sure and get this mailed because I won’t live beyond this afternoon.”
We encountered a lot of destruction. Bodies would be so thick you’d have to crawl over them sometimes and we couldn’t always see the enemy.
While I was up there, someone came up and stood behind me. I knew it was some kind of brass. He kneeled down and asked me, “Soldier, how’s it going?” Then he said, “Could I borrow your rifle?”
I said, “Yes, sir, you may.” You have to keep in mind that no one wore their rank on them anywhere. But anyway, I didn’t recognize him. He was about fifty years old. And he pulled off his binoculars and let me have them. And he says, “I want you to tell me if I’m still a pretty good shot.”
It was just like out at the firing range. So that’s what I did. And he shot for what seemed to me like ten or fifteen minutes. He was good—a sharp shooter.
As he’d shoot and hit one of the Japanese I’d tell him. He hit quite a few. When he got ready to leave he thanked me and wished me well. I gave him his binoculars back, and he handed me my rifle.
After he left, a few of the guys came up from the squad and one said, “Buff, do you know who that was?” I said, “No, I didn’t know him. I assume it’s some brass though.” They told me that it was General Simon Bolivar Buckner.
Combat here was a lot different than it was in Europe. We crawled most of the time. Sometimes it might take two or three weeks to take one spot. And to take those hills you’d have to have enough people left to hold the hill once you took it. When we took a place and got kicked off, we’d always try to go back. We’d be seesawing back and forth quite often. And in all those times you’re getting people killed and wounded. It’s just really unbelievable.
When you’re taking a hill and there are machine guns and small arms shooting at you, you haven’t got much of a chance. You use a sense that’s rarely ever used, a sense of survival. After several weeks, you act like there’s no tomorrow. There’s no tonight. There’s not even the afternoon. It’s only now. Now is all you think about, and how you’re going to survive and help your buddies survive.
That’s all you do; you didn’t think about home. You didn’t think about your girlfriend. You didn’t think about anything but “now.” And you ask, “Am I going to make it?”
I was hit in the leg with shrapnel and got what they call “the million-dollar wound,” meaning I’d be going home. Well, it didn’t always happen like that. Guys wounded the night before were up the next morning picking up their packs and weapons.
I was hit in the leg, in a spot where it went right under my knee and went to the bone and stopped there. But the thing that you don’t realize is that the hot piece of shrapnel “fries” your flesh just like cooking bacon. You can hear it. And it does hurt. They cut the shrapnel out and in my case they said that they didn’t have time to wait for a morphine shot to deaden the pain of that wound.
Finally the Japanese started to collapse. But they would not come through our area. There’s a cliff on the southern end of Okinawa, and they were jumping off rather than surrendering.
I couldn’t believe the Japanese would ever surrender. You’d think when they did that we went out, threw our hats up, and hollered all over the place. We didn’t do it. It was about eleven o’clock in the morning when we found out that they’d all surrendered. Instead of celebrating, we just stretched out on our bunks and stayed there until late that afternoon, even missing our noon chow time.
I remember praying, “God, I might just live yet.” And thinking I might even get home.
10TH ARMY ASSAULT FORCE
VICINITY SHURI CASTLE, OKINAWA
31 MAY 1945
1330 HOURS LOCAL
In Europe, things had happened rapidly. On 28 April, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was captured and killed, and his body was hung in the street by Italian partisans while the Allies were taking Venice.
Two days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker while Soviet troops entered the city, and a week later an unconditional surrender of German troops to Allied forces was announced. These events brought about the official end of the war in Europe.
Three days after V-E Day, General Buckner launched an attack against the Japanese Shuri Castle line, bringing about the fiercest fighting yet on Okinawa. General Ushijima asked Tokyo to send more reinforcements and supplies, but he was refused. Tokyo could not spare any more troops, and had already begun to plan how to deploy all remaining soldiers to protect the Home Islands from an American invasion.
On 20 May, the Japanese had begun their withdrawal from China, getting ready for the inevitable invasion of Japan. Ushijima knew now that it was over. After two months of brutal combat, incurring over 50,000 American casualties, the soldiers and Marines of the 10th Army secured the Shuri Castle line.
Japanese Premier Suzuki announced to the people of Japan that the entire nation “will fight to the very end” rather than accept unconditional surrender. But the Japanese people had to be aware of the obvious.
On 11 June, General Buckner sent a message to General Ushijima to surrender. The Japanese leader dismissed it with great disdain—surrender meant endless shame.
Corporal Mel Heckt was at Shuri Castle as part of the 4th Marine Regiment, made up almost entirely of Marine Raiders. He was a squad leader when his replacement company was sent in to help take Shuri Castle and the rest of the Oroku Peninsula. By the time the combat ended, Heckt had been promoted to platoon leader, a job for a sergeant, simply because the Marines’ heavy casualties had used up all of the sergeants.
CORPORAL MELVIN “MEL” HECKT, USMC
Oroku Peninsula, Okinawa
18 June 1945
0940 Hours Local
We made the landing at night. We got up to the hill and as soon as we got there, I remember mortar fire killed our BAR man. I lost two of my machine gun ammo carriers on the second day. The Japanese artillery was great when we were on top of Sugar Loaf Hill. An artillery shell came over that ridge and killed three of my machine gunners. I’d just left the wounded with a corpsman and was going toward Naha when we came to a bridge. We lost all kinds of men in trying to take that bridge.
One fellow had a leg blown off, and Tex Durasole took out his K-bar knife and cut off the guy’s leg in order to extricate him and save his life.
On Oroku Peninsula, one of the worst experiences happened one night on a ridge toward the end of the island. I took the last watch on the gun and about 5 AM I heard a banzai attack. They were coming right at me. My machine gun jammed and then my rifle jammed. Fortunately some A Company guys were standing in a semicircle—like they were at a firing range—and they picked off all these guys.
The next morning, Eddie Dunham from Detroit went up early to drop a satchel charge over the ridge. A bullet hit him right in the head and I helped carry him down. I thought he was alive, but my corpsman said later, “Mel, he was dead. You were feeling your own pulse.” And he was such a close friend of mine that I broke down and cried.
One of my machine gunners, Bobby Banker from Racine, Wisconsin, was firing at quite a long distance and doing really well, and he got a bullet right in his neck. We got a corpsman up there and we tried to clamp the artery and stop the bleeding. Finally the doctor came, but he had died.
I lost a heck of a lot of men. Out of my fifty-three-man machine gun platoon, only four didn’t get hit or killed. I was one of the four.
10TH ARMY ASSAULT FORCE
OROKU PENINSULA, OKINAWA
8 JULY 1945
1100 HOURS LOCAL
After a month of bloody and violent combat, American Marines and soldiers finally broke through General Ushijima’s defenses and conquered Okinawa by the end of June.
Back in the States, America’s new president, Harry Truman, wanted to end World War II quickly, with minimal casualties. After witnessing the quick, unconditional surrender of Germany, Truman hoped that Japan might be convinced to do the same.
Mopping-up operations began on the southern end of Okinawa, and Winston Churchill spoke directly to Americans to tell them just how important the Battle of Okinawa was to the world. He said, “The strength and willpower, devotion and technical resources applied by the United States to this task, joined with the death struggle of the enemy... places this battle among the most intense and famous in military history.”
Okinawa was supposed to be the hoped-for turning point that essentially ended the war in the Pacific. But the Imperial Army was unquestionably well fortified and had enough supplies to hold out for many months. The Americans, on the other hand, didn’t want to prolong the combat on Okinawa any longer than necessary. Finally, with guts, determination, and commitment, the Americans gave it their all. Both sides sacrificed many lives, but in the end, the Americans finally broke through.
It was said that one Marine division assaulted a hill about a dozen times, taking the hill, losing it, and retaking it again and again in what seemed to be a never-ending cycle. In the process, the division lost twice the number of men in their original troop complement.
Japanese casualties also grew steadily. The Americans slowly pierced the Japanese lines, and they retreated, charging the Americans in a futile suicidal attack. A few actually surrendered. Nevertheless, the Marines and soldiers had to seize the island inch by bloody inch.
Then, by late June, General Ushijima and his officers knew it was utterly hopeless. Still, unconditional surrender seemed out of the question—true to Japanese tradition. Most of the Imperial Army wanted no part of surrender, and they continued to throw themselves into hopeless suicidal charges. Finally, even General Ushijima recognized that by now the battle was over and his cause was lost. Believing that he had embarrassed himself before his emperor, he determined to end his life in an honorable way. So he brought together his officers and said his goodbyes to them. Then he and his chief of staff, General Cho, took part in the traditional ceremonial feast, after which each of them wrote a haiku poem. Then the two officers dressed in their white robes and went out to the front of the cave in which Ushijima had his command headquarters. Each of the two officers knelt and disemboweled himself with a sword. A Japanese junior officer then took his own sword and cut off the heads of the two generals.
The American commander, General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., was killed by Japanese artillery fire on 18 June. That same day, Marine General Roy Geiger assumed command of the 10th Army on Okinawa, the first time a U.S. Marine would command a field army.
Failure to stop the Americans at Okinawa meant that Japan had to face the unimaginable—an American invasion of the Japanese homeland.
On 21 June, the 10th Army pushed through to take the only part of the island still not in American hands, the southernmost point on Okinawa. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Japanese troops followed the lead of General Ushijima in ritual suicide. On the next day, the American flag flew over Okinawa. The eighty-two-day Okinawa campaign was finally declared officially over on 2 July.
The cost had been horrendous for both sides. American casualties amounted to more than 68,000 sailors, soldiers, and Marines, with some 16,000 killed or missing in action. The Navy lost more men than the Marines did in the Battle of Okinawa, mainly from kamikaze attacks.
The Japanese lost some 131,000 men, with about 108,000 killed in action and another 24,000 sealed in caves or underground fortifications. Fewer than 11,000 Japanese soldiers, most of them wounded, surrendered or let themselves be captured.
Tragically, some 150,000 Okinawa civilians—about one-third of the population—also lost their lives. And before the battle ended, another third to half of the civilians had been wounded. Many were caught in the crossfire of combat between the two armies, although the Japanese killed many of the civilians when they tried to surrender to the Americans. Only the Battle of Stalingrad, in the European theater, saw a greater loss of civilian lives.
In the Battle of Okinawa the U.S. fleet lost thirty-four ships and more than 600 were damaged. The U.S. lost almost as many aircraft. However, the Japanese lost nearly 8,000 aircraft and nearly all of its remaining Imperial fleet.
Victory on Okinawa brought no rest for the battle-weary soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen. They were told to prepare for the massive invasion of Japan itself. They’d won the battle for Okinawa, but the war itself was definitely not yet over.
From Potsdam, after the surrender of Germany and the Nazi war machine, the Allied leaders warned Japan of the destruction of their homeland when the invasion came. The Japanese still would not bend. Their military leaders would rather die than surrender.
But the casualties of the Battle of Okinawa helped President Truman confirm his decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman reckoned that although the new devices would probably kill thousands, using them to force a capitulation by Japan would be the more humane route in the long run.
More people were killed on Okinawa than were later killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The Okinawan civilians and Japanese and American dead at Okinawa numbered nearly 300,000.
Those numbers must have seemed horrendous to Truman, yet they would only get worse if the bombings continued over Tokyo, and if the planned invasion went forward. The president had also been told that at least one million American deaths would occur during an invasion of Japan. The Allied leaders projected that another one to two million Japanese lives would be lost in defending against an invasion.
These projections did not even include the 400,000 American and Allied POWs, slave laborers, and civilian detainees held by Japan; most would be executed if an invasion began. Nor would it include the half million to a million Japanese troops virtually stranded on various Pacific islands, who would likely starve if Japanese supply ships did not get through—which was now the case since the Japanese had no ships and the Americans controlled the sea lanes.
The Washington war strategists agreed that they couldn’t sacrifice millions of lives, but they weren’t sure about the atomic bomb, either. In any event, as the sign on Truman’s desk put it, “The buck stops here.” The president would make the ultimate decision. And by now, Truman knew that the atomic bomb was only viable alternative.